In his own history every man repeats, within certain limits, the
history of the race; and the inexhaustible educational value of race
experience lies in the fact that it so completely parallels the
history of every member of the race. Childhood has the fancies and
faiths of the earliest ages; youth has visions and dreams which form,
generation after generation, a kind of contemporary mythology;
maturity aspires after and sometimes attains the repose, the clear
intelligence, the catholic outlook of the best modern type of mind and
character. In some form every modern man travels the road over which
his predecessors have passed, but he no longer blazes his path; a
highway has been built for him. He is spared the immense toil of
formulating the ideas by which he lives, and of passing through the
searching experience which is often the only approach to the greatest
truths. If he has originative power, he forms ideas of his own, but
they are based on a massive foundation of ideas which others have
worked out for him; he passes through his own individual experience,
but he inherits the results of a multitude of experiences of which
nothing remains save certain final generalisations.
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